I was pretty floored by the improvement with PureMusic - wouldnt have thought that it could make such an isntant diffewrence. And it gives you proper dithered volume control in itunes, which is really useful, I find. Best of all, of course, is that it piggy-backs on itunes so you can still use that for music organization/etc, which for those ipod/iphone users is always going to weigh in its favor.....

I tried pure music earlier this week. I have lots of flac in itunes using fluke and when I tried to play them using itunes+pure music my itunes went crazy and the songs just kept skipping to the next track and never playing. Has anyone else experienced this?

I personally go with Vox. I tried Ayerwave for a few days, but Vox is more feature rich and does basically everything I need it to. It's very lightweight, sleek, sounds great, and plays everything you throw at it. It's also very customisable.

I must be behind the times, as I'd never heard of Vox or AyreWave. Downloaded both of them this afternoon and immediately prefer both to Cog, Songbird and VLC. This will probably make me hold off on purchasing PureMusic for a while.

just listened to "shake you rump" by the beastie boys, and that bass sound that comes in at 40 seconds is fatter, more open and has a lot more "ripple" when i play it through VLC vs itunes... so that's what brought me to this thread. just wondering in terms of sound quality, has anyone noticed discernible difference with the same audio file and different players?

listening through grado 325is and a pa2v2 amp.

out of sheer convenience i use my ipod/itunes for most listening.

for the record, it was the 20th anniversary remastered paul's boutique.

yup, just attended a higher end dac listening session yesterday and VLC clearly outperformed itunes, especially when it came to using a usb DAC or USB / Spdif bridge. itunes with USB devices had much more of that edgy sound in the highs and upper mids that is ofter associated with cheap usb dacs or usb/spdif converters.

Have not compared it directly to Pure Music though, but VLC still had the lack of depth and some artifacts that lead me to believe you should also try PM. A lot of what you hear is also going to be system dependent, hence no consensus on what really is the best player.

tried out vox a bit, I really like it, songbird is too laggy for me, it also used a ton of ram so I cannot recommend it, but the features it has are pretty awesome (auto lyric search, auto concert search, auto picture search)

also vox has a nice Bauer stereophonic-to-binaural setting, but imo it takes out some of the details within the recording, the default is pretty good. Is it all drag and drop? I kinda like being able to search through my music without dealing with file folders.

the detail available now is amazing, everything is opened up, I can hear voices like never before, damn i never understood why ppl would eq until now, the only thing lacking is the bass, and I dont think that will change even with eq.

Tried out Vox, Play & Cog; found all of them too simplistic. iTunes forces you to use ALAC (or use Fluke limited to 44.1khz). Songbird lacks advanced navigation options and can be sluggish. Clementine, which has the best features out of all, is not stable.

AyreWave has morphed into "Decibel" (now in Beta). It will control output bit rate. That's what I'm after. But it only runs on Snow Leopard. My desktop / listening station computer is an older Power PC that will only run Leopard. So no go. I tried PureMusic but didn't like the un-Mac-like way that it hangs on iTunes, especially the top banner. I'll have to wait for PM to improve it's UI, or for my desktop to die (or suddenly need to waste some cash and go buy Amarra).

Tried Decibel out, looks like a promising project, in the mode described below I was getting strange clicks in the background. This is from the Decibel homepage:

"For audiophile users desiring more control over their audio, Decibel can take exclusive control of the output device (using hog mode) and send audio in the device's native format. Additionally, Decibel can automatically adjust the output device's sample rate to that of the playing track, preventing audio quality degradation associated with software sample rate conversion."

Would someone be able to expound on what the developer is trying to say?

Tried Decibel out, looks like a promising project, in the mode described below I was getting strange clicks in the background. This is from the Decibel homepage:

"For audiophile users desiring more control over their audio, Decibel can take exclusive control of the output device (using hog mode) and send audio in the device's native format. Additionally, Decibel can automatically adjust the output device's sample rate to that of the playing track, preventing audio quality degradation associated with software sample rate conversion."

Would someone be able to expound on what the developer is trying to say?

CD quality music has a sample rate of 44.1 kHz. High res music (from SACDs or various online sites such as HDTracks and Linn Music) has higher sample rates, more like those used by recording studios, such as 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz and higher. Using Audio Midi Set-up on your Mac, you can change the output sample rate from your computer. However, if the output rate is different from the rate the track is, Mac OS X re-samples it to match the output, which can potentially degrade the sound. Hence much of this software adjusts the output rate to match that of the track before playing.

I have been using Pure Music with pre-allocation, Hog mode, and upsampling in multiples. It piggybacks with iTunes, and you can use any iTunes control activity - playlists, iPhone remotes etc. Huge improvement over plain iTunes.

Currently playing with Fidelia, which looks to be pretty good as well. Fidelia is still a work in progress, and may surpass PM, but not at present. Fidelia is selling their own iPhone app for $10, which is $10 bucks more than the Apple Remote app for iTunes (and PM).

I tried the demo of Amarra a long bit ago, it was still many times the price of Pure Music, and much more difficult to use. I also tried Ayrewave, and it was very difficult to use with a large library, every time I clicked on it, I got the beach ball for a minute or 2, not sure if they fixed that with Decibel.

iTunes is still the king of music organization on a Mac, and I plan to stick with a player that complements iTunes, which is currently PM, and I am watching Fidelia.

must say Pure Music is intriguing, since i really like the itunes interface. i'm thinking about trying out the free demo, but i'm wondering... is there a point to this if i don't have a usb DAC? i'm sure it will sound better with one, but is there an improvement with headphones straight out of the computer?